You see higher framerates are only supported by the MJPG stream and the H264 stream. I think (but I'm not 100% sorry about MJPG) that Processing only supports the YUV2 streams. 

From what I read in Processing 2.0 the GSVideo library is now partly/completely embedded in the default video library. GSvideo is based on Gstreamer (so I suppose Processing 2 makes use of this as well). 

Now I've read that Gstreamer now suppports H264 cams:  http://kakaroto.homelinux.net/2012/09/uvc-h264-encoding-cameras-support-in-gstreamer/

In GSvideo there is a pipeline function to connect to streams and webcams. See this example:  http://gsvideo.sourceforge.net/examples/Pipelines/Capture/Capture.pde

Anyone an idea if and how we can use this pipeline function in Processing 2? Or do we still need to use GSvideo. I prefer to work in Processing 2 because all the image processing is highly optimized (and much simpler than using GSvideo and GLGraphics.

Another option to stay within Processing 2.0 could be to use the gstreamer-java classes  directly to create a custom pipeline in your sketch. The source code of GSPipeline in GSVideo might be useful for this.

However, a perhaps more complicated issue that would come up in order to incorporate UVC H264 support is that the UVC gstreamer plugin seems to be fairly recent, and hence not included with the gstreamer libs bundled with GSVideo, or core video in Processing 2.0. Including this plugin would probably involve compiling gstreamer from source, which is not a trivial task. There is an official gstreamer SDK that offers pre-built gstreamer binaries, but I don't know how difficult would be to use those with GSVideo and/or core video, and don't know if they include the UVC plugin or not.

I work on osx, so I think the qtkitsrc pipeline should be used (that gives a captured image), but this is already implemented in the video library. 

I know that H264 is kind of new, but what about MJPG support? Is there a way to access part of that stream. That would give you already access to higher framerates and resolutions. 

If I look in this qtkit source:  http://gitorious.org/gstreamer-camerabin2/gst-plugins-bad/source/0e4e351b83401ae8dae062ffda390a61e5c020a6:sys/applemedia/qtkitvideosrc.m it seems that only raw-yuv is supported. 

I suppose we have to wait till MJPG will be supported by QTKit? Or are there other ways. 

And windows, does it support more type of streams?

Any suggestions of stable cams are still welcome (that don't drop frames in low light conditions).

I've tested the Logitech C270 (25 euro), that gives 1280*720 at 30fps on osx. Kind of stable. Just misses 1 frame in 1 or 2 seconds with daylight, but in low light more frames are dropped. 

Just a quick modification of the capture example, to give some insight in dropped frames:

2. import processing.video.*;
3. 
   
4. Capture cam;
5. 
   
6. // keep last dropped frame number
7. int lastFrameCount;
8. 
   
9. void setup() {
10.   size(640, 480);
11.   
12.   frameRate(30);
13. 
    
14.   String[] cameras = Capture.list();
15. 
    
16.   if (cameras.length == 0) {
17.     println("There are no cameras available for capture.");
18.     exit();
19.   } 
20.   else {
21.     println("Available cameras:");
22.     for (int i = 0; i < cameras.length; i++) {
23.       println(i+" "+cameras[i]); // modified to show index
24.     }
25. 
    
26.     // The camera can be initialized directly using an element
27.     // from the array returned by list():
28.     cam = new Capture(this, cameras[0]);
29.     
30.     // Start capturing the images from the camera
31.     cam.start();
32.   }
33. }
34. 
    
35. void draw() {
36.   boolean available = false;
37.    
38.   if (cam.available() == true) {
39.     cam.read();
40.     available = true;
41.   }
42.   
43.   if(!available) 
44.   { println("last missed frame tlll this missed frame was "+(frameCount-lastFrameCount)+" frames ago");
45.     lastFrameCount = frameCount;
46.   }
47.   
48.    image(cam, 0, 0);
49. }